Noticing that Democratic strategist Mark Penn “is the Wall Street Journal‘s ‘Microtrend’-spotting columnist” and “also CEO of PR giant Burson-Marsteller,” Gawker blogger Hamilton Nolan (8/26/09) posits that “only a scumbag would abuse the former to drum up business for the latter.” Alas, “Scumbag spotted!” is Nolan’s cry when writing that Penn’s latest (old, and none too insightful) “Microtrend” column is about “glamping“–glamorous camping. It ran last weekend. By Monday, according to an internal email obtained by Gawker, Burson was already trying to recruit companies from the industry featured in the column as clients. Nolan goes on to remind us that […]

Longtime health insurance company bigwig and former holder of “the ultimate PR job,” Wendell Potter recently told PBS‘ Bill Moyers (Bill Moyers Journal, 7/10/09) how he had been “involved in the campaign by the industry to discredit Michael Moore and his film Sicko,” and now sees that “the industry is resorting to the same tactics they’ve used… back in the early ’90s, when they were leading the effort to kill the Clinton plan” for national healthcare reform. Potter told Moyers that he “knew that 47 million people were uninsured, but I didn’t put faces with that number” until he “picked […]